-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has decided to examine the constitutional question of whether a political party or a political leader can file a PIL before it. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Amitav Roy decided to examine the maintainability of such PILs after attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi said that two PILs filed by an NGO-turned-political outfit, Swaraj Abhiyan, and a Chhattisgarh leader cannot be entertained because of the "political...

-The Indian Express Across the country, wage employment generated under the scheme has gone up from 32 crore person-days in April - May 2015 to 51 crore person-days in the corresponding months of 2016. Signalling an increase in uptake of MGNREGA work on the ground owing to drought as well as the slow revival of the scheme itself, the person-days generated in the first two months of the financial year has gone...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A month has gone by since the Supreme Court issued directions to tackle drought but it is "business as usual" for the Centre and the affected states, civil society organisations have said. Worse, government intervention is even less than what it used to be in colonial times, they said. A quarter of the country is drought-hit at present. On May 11, the apex court had pronounced the Centre guilty...

-TheWire.in Centre and state governments have not followed through on providing food grains, mid-day meals, loans or MGNREGA payments. New Delhi: Six people’s movements and organisations that have come together as an informal consortium to monitor the response of governments to the drought situation in large parts of the country slammed the Narendra Modi government as well as the states for their collective failure to act when nearly half the country’s population...

-Livemint.com New Delhi: Back from a walk through drought-affected parts of the country, Yogendra Yadav, political scientist and co-founder of non-profit Swaraj Abhiyan, speaks on state compliance of Supreme Court orders, a booming private water market in Marathwada, and why farmer movements are weakest at a time when agrarian distress is at its peak. Edited excerpts from an interview: * You just came back from a trip to Bundelkhand and Marathwada. What...